Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Rose Gertrud Markiel * 1888

Rothenbaumchaussee 229 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

1941 Lodz
1942 Chelmno ermordet

Rose Gertrud Markiel, born on 29 Aug. 1888 in Hamburg, deported to Lodz on 25 Oct. 1941, murdered in the Chelmno extermination camp on 10 May 1942

Rothenbaumchaussee 229

In Oct. 1941, an attentive, curious boy saw an inconspicuous neighbor with a suitcase in the alley between his home and the neighboring house on Rothenbaumchaussee. She stood in front of her basement apartment. He asked her if she wanted to go on a journey, and she explained to the boy that she was being resettled. The meaning of this sentence only became clear to him many years later.

Who was this woman?

Rose Gertrud Markiel was born in Hamburg on 28 Sept. 1888. After her own school days, about which we know nothing, she attended the female teachers’ training college within the educational institute of the St. Johannis convent in Hamburg, a semi-public institution, from 1 Apr. 1905 to 7 Feb. 1908. Among the 26 students of the seminar in her class, one was Catholic, two Jewish, and the others Protestant. Rose Markiel completed demonstration lessons, written examinations, and an oral examination in 22 subjects (without Protestant religion), achieved good results, and was thus qualified to teach lower and intermediate grades in the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule).

On 15 June 1909, she entered the Hamburg teaching service. At that time, elementary school teachers were not particularly respected, the teaching was schematized, the teachers were strictly bound by guidelines, and female teachers were not allowed to marry.
Christian religious instruction was compulsory at elementary schools. It was difficult for Jewish teachers to obtain a permanent position in the teaching profession. Thus, Rose Markiel worked in an insecure position until after the First World War.

In Hamburg, a newly elected city parliament (Bürgerschaft) passed a law on comprehensive school in 1919. The most important decisions concerned the introduction of the four-year elementary school, the elimination of authoritative school management, the self-administration of the schools, and participation of parents. On 1 Apr. 1920, Rose Markiel was permanently employed as a teacher. She joined the "Society of Friends of the Patriotic School and Education System” ("Gesellschaft der Freunde des Vaterländischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens”), which aimed to improve material provision and the rights of teachers and was committed to the further training of its members.
Rose Markiel taught at the elementary school at Bachstrasse 94 from 1920–1921 and then changed to the elementary school at Humboldtstrasse 30a.

After the Nazi "seizure of power,” she was dismissed from the Hamburg civil service in June 1933 based on the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”), which took effect on 7 Apr. 1933. She received only a small pension.

Probably also for this reason, she gave up her apartment at Alsterdorferstrasse 110 and moved into the basement apartment mentioned above at Rothenbaumchaussee 229. Whether she was thinking about emigrating is not known to us.

After the beginning of the Second World War on 1 Sept. 1939, the situation of the Jewish population again worsened considerably yet. For example, they were allowed to buy their food only in special stores, a curfew after 8 p.m. was issued, the possession of radio sets was forbidden, and Jews who did not immediately follow any instructions could be arrested immediately and deported to a concentration camp. The measures culminated in the deportations beginning in Oct. 1941, euphemistically called the "resettlement” ("Umsiedlung”) of the Jewish population.

In mid-October, more than 1030 Jewish residents of Hamburg received registered letters informing them that they were to report to the former provincial Masonic Lodge for Lower Saxony on Moorweidenstrasse one day before their "evacuation to Litzmannstadt.” Their assets were confiscated and the keys to apartments had to be handed in to the police. Only 50 kilograms (approx. 110 lbs) of luggage and a small amount of money were allowed to be taken along. Rose Gertrud Markiel was one of those affected. On 25 Oct. 1941 (one day after the boy had seen her with her suitcase), she was transported by truck to the Hannoversche Bahnhof train station in Hamburg, from where the train departed eastward at 10:10 a.m. as scheduled.

At the destination, the ghetto in Lodz (renamed "Litzmannstadt” after the German occupation), the new arrivals were placed in cramped mass quarters. They had no furniture or beds, no running water, functioning sanitary facilities were scarce, and the food supply was insufficient. Rose Markiel was accommodated at Hohensteiner Strasse 49.

About half a year later, on 10 May 1942, she received the "resettlement order” to the Chelmno extermination camp, 60 kilometers (approx. 37 miles) away. Those deported there were immediately driven into trucks and murdered by means of exhaust fumes.

Rose Gertrud Markiel was officially declared dead as of 8 May 1945 (the date of the German surrender).

What do we know about Rose Gertrud Markiel’s family?
Her father, Josel Moses Markel (born on 16 Mar. 1852, died on 18 Feb. 1937 in Hamburg), had moved to Hamburg in 1873 with his parents and siblings from his birthplace in Wierzbolow, today in Lithuania. From the age of 14, Josel attended the Academic School of the Johanneum high school (Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums), where he passed his high school graduation exam (Abitur), and then studied medicine in Würzburg and Freiburg. He received his doctorate in 1880. Back in Hamburg, he asked to be admitted to the Hamburg Federation (Hamburgischer Staatsverband) and was then included in the list of doctors licensed in Hamburg with his name officially changed to "Markiel.” He worked as a doctor for the poor, as a surgeon, and as an obstetrician.

On 21 Nov. 1887, Josel Markiel and Flora Hesdoerffer (born on 30 May 1875 in Fulda, died on 19 Dec. 1921 in Hamburg), married and had two children. After the first-born Rose Gertrud, Helene Dobra was born on 9 Sept. 1891. The family’s center of life and work was Wexstrasse 2, until they moved into an apartment with a practice at Schlüterstrasse 74 around 1905.

In 1914, Helene Dobra married the physicist Paul Hertz (born on 29 July 1881), who maintained contact with Albert Einstein, among others. They moved to Göttingen, and Paul Hertz taught at the University of Göttingen. The couple had three children. Helene Dobra studied pedagogy, psychology, and economics at the University of Göttingen from 1927 to 1931, received her doctorate in 1932, and worked in Göttingen as a social worker.

Due to the Nazis’ "seizure of power,” she and her husband lost their jobs. With the help of a modest scholarship abroad, the Hertz family was able to live in Geneva for a short time, later in Prague. They received a visa to the USA in 1938 and were able to flee there with their three children (Hans Georg, born on 8 Aug. 1915, Rudolf Heinrich, born on 4 Feb. 1917, and Elisabeth Flora, born on 21 Aug. 1924). Paul Hertz died as early as 1940, and Helene Hertz was not able to regain a professional foothold until 1948, after completing training as a social worker that was recognized in the USA.

The children of Helene and Paul Hertz studied in the USA and worked successfully in their professions: Hans, the astronomer, worked for NASA. Rudolf, drafted into the army in 1941, took part in the liberation of Paris, his birthplace Göttingen, and the Buchenwald concentration camp. He studied and later became director of the Merchants Bank of New York. Elisabeth (married name Freed) became a research chemist.
Helene Dobra Hertz died in Pennsylvania in April 1971 at the age of 79.

Two brothers of Josel Markiel, Gerson and Jacob, also left Hamburg and lived in the USA.
The other brother, Meier Markel, married to Jenny Goldschmidt, worked until his death in 1929 in his father’s business, which his daughter Johanna (born in Hamburg in 1901) continued to run as general manager until it was liquidated in 1938.
Johanna was able to flee to the USA, but suffered a nervous breakdown in 1945. She lived in stationary care at a clinic until her death in 1972.

Meier Markel’s widow Jenny moved to a Jewish retirement home in Berlin in 1938. From there, she was deported in 1942 at the age of 70, first to Theresienstadt and in Sept. 1942 to the Treblinka extermination camp. Her daughter Agnes, who had worked as a teacher in Berlin, was deported to Auschwitz in Mar. 1943.

Rose’s mother Flora, née Hesdörffer, had four brothers: Benedict, Emil, Julius, and Isidor.
There were Holocaust victims from this branch of the family, too:
Fleury, Julius’ daughter, was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp in 1942.
Thanks to Carl Hesdörffer, another family member, a family tree and chronicle of the Hesdörffer family exists, which was submitted to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel. Carl Hesdörffer fled from Cologne to the Netherlands in 1939 and he was deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Mar. 1943. To him, we owe the following description of Flora Markiel, née Hesdörffer, Rose’s mother: "... like the mother, a perfect beauty and resembling her exactly in all virtues.”

A Stolperstein in front of the house at Rothenbaumchaussee 229 commemorates Rose Gabriele Markiel.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2020
© Susan Johannsen/Christina Igla

Quellen: 1; 5; 8; 9; Brief von Herrn Leser an das IGdJ, 2017; StaH: Senatskanzlei; Korrespondenz ehemaliger jüdischer Mitbürger im Ausland:131-1II_3456; Landgericht Hamburg Wiedergutmachung:213-13_85; Personenstandsunterlagen: 332-5_8144/91/1937; 332-5_7014/1223/1921; Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht: 332-7 B III/16378, 332-7_B III 14118 (1880); Amt für Wiedergutmachung: 351-11_13326, 351-11_25150, 351-11_46695; Oberschulbehörde: 361-2V_488g3d Band 2; Heiratsregister Mainz Nr.493/1887 Band 2, Hamburger Adressbücher –online- 1892–1941; www.newsday.com/long-island/obituaries; YV viewer 10631453_0327183: Geschichte und Stammtafeln der Familien Hesdörffer und Hess; www.ancestry.de – Registerbücher aus dem Ghetto Lodz 1939–44 USH MM (eingesehen am 16.7.2017); Stoll/Kurtzweil: Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterländischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens in Hamburg 1905–1930, Hamburg 1930; Oberschulbehörde HH (Hrsg): Das HH Schulwesen 1914–1924, Hamburg 1925; Meyer, Beate: Deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden in Ghettos und Lagern (1941–1945), Hamburg 2017; Kaplan, Marion: Jüdisches Bürgertum, Hamburg, 1997; Hamburgisches Lehrerverzeichnis, Hamburg (1920–1963); Walk, Joseph: Das Sonderrecht für die Juden im NS-Staat, Heidelberg 2013.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".